Further Chronicles Of Avonlea: 03. Her Father’s Daughter
by
“We must invite your Aunt Jane, of course,” said Mrs. Spencer.
Rachel made a protesting movement with her large, white, shapely hands–hands which were so different from the thin, dark, twisted ones folded on the table opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of life, and thought, and action.
“I don’t see why we must invite Aunt Jane,” said Rachel, with as much impatience as her soft, throaty voice could express. “Aunt Jane doesn’t like me, and I don’t like Aunt Jane.”
“I’m sure I don’t see why you don’t like her,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s ungrateful of you. She has always been very kind to you.”
“She has always been very kind with one hand,” smiled Rachel. “I remember the first time I ever saw Aunt Jane. I was six years old. She held out to me a small velvet pincushion with beads on it. And then, because I did not, in my shyness, thank her quite as promptly as I should have done, she rapped my head with her bethimbled finger to ‘teach me better manners.’ It hurt horribly–I’ve always had a tender head. And that has been Aunt Jane’s way ever since. When I grew too big for the thimble treatment she used her tongue instead–and that hurt worse. And you know, mother, how she used to talk about my engagement. She is able to spoil the whole atmosphere if she happens to come in a bad humor. I don’t want her.”
“She must be invited. People would talk so if she wasn’t.”
“I don’t see why they should. She’s only my great-aunt by marriage. I wouldn’t mind in the least if people did talk. They’ll talk anyway–you know that, mother.”
“Oh, we must have her,” said Mrs. Spencer, with the indifferent finality that marked all her words and decisions–a finality against which it was seldom of any avail to struggle. People, who knew, rarely attempted it; strangers occasionally did, misled by the deceit of appearances.
Isabella Spencer was a wisp of a woman, with a pale, pretty face, uncertainly-colored, long-lashed grayish eyes, and great masses of dull, soft, silky brown hair. She had delicate aquiline features and a small, babyish red mouth. She looked as if a breath would sway her. The truth was that a tornado would hardly have caused her to swerve an inch from her chosen path.
For a moment Rachel looked rebellious; then she yielded, as she generally did in all differences of opinion with her mother. It was not worth while to quarrel over the comparatively unimportant matter of Aunt Jane’s invitation. A quarrel might be inevitable later on; Rachel wanted to save all her resources for that. She gave her shoulders a shrug, and wrote Aunt Jane’s name down on the wedding list in her large, somewhat untidy handwriting–a handwriting which always seemed to irritate her mother. Rachel never could understand this irritation. She could never guess that it was because her writing looked so much like that in a certain packet of faded letters which Mrs. Spencer kept at the bottom of an old horsehair trunk in her bedroom. They were postmarked from seaports all over the world. Mrs. Spencer never read them or looked at them; but she remembered every dash and curve of the handwriting.